geo2web.com

::: via :::

Google Maps Street View in France (and a tiny bit of Italy) has certainly brightened up my week. However the rest of Europe may have to wait some time for Street View to appear. Well they will if all the Street View car drivers are as keen to win a Darwin Award as the driver who took this image:

Now what possible reason could anyone have to close a mountain road at 2000 metres? I know - let’s drive on and see:

Ah avalanches! That looks fun let’s drive on.

What happened to the road?

_____________

[Read more →]

::: via :::

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager

We’re pretty excited about all of these birthdays that have been happening lately. The Google Outreach program just celebrated its first birthday, and Google Maps Street View is happy to also be going one year strong.

We’re also pleased as punch to wish our pride and joy for geoweb developers everywhere, the Google Maps API, a happy third birthday. It was June 29th, 2005, but it seems like only yesterday that we were marvelling at what context the Gmaps Pedometer was giving us for our running routes or walk to work. Who can forget how many great real estate auctions we were finding with 2RealEstateAuctions? Since then the API has been helping businesses like Ace Hardware map its store locations, and Trulia plot houses for sale. Thanks, Google Maps API, for making all of these great mashups and tools possible! 

[Read more →]

::: via :::

US National Tennis Court Mashup:

Want a great way to find a tennis court anywhere in the US? TennisMaps.com comes to life with a mashup that actually took me a bit off guard when I went to review it. I wasn’t expecting the overwhelming coverage of courts per city, the amount of detail for each court or the services you can interact with for each court. You’ve got driving directions, ratings, court details and info about nearby toilets, restaurants and hotels. Quick options to link-to or print are also built in. My only suggestion is to create a way to quickly go back to the US view with all ball markers showing.. Even if you’re not a tennis buff, take a peek at this one, it’s pretty well done.

MyTopo: Browse US/Canada Topo Maps!:

Topographic (topo) maps are maps that show detail about natural and man-made features in an area. A hill or mountain is represented by contour lines drawn out to show terrain. Structures are labeled or their shapes are drawn out. In addition to practical planning uses, topo maps are pretty fun and almost geo-romantic to explore. MyTopo.com lets you browse these topo maps for anywhere in the US and Canada..

• California Green Buildings - created by The State of California Department of General Services. Andrew Turner has also re-mashed this and created a KML file you can grab. Check out more details about his project here.. [Thanks Andres!]
• Mapping the Newsweek Top 1300+ US High Schools for 2008

Street View Mania on Real Estate Mashups!

RealEstate.com, Trulia, PropertyMaps and Fibzber are among the first housing mashups to integrate Google Maps Street View!

4 Cool boundary mapping examples:

• WalkScore polyline mouse-over - Roll your mouse over this heatmap to see polylines instantly outline the boundary!
• Zillow Neighborhood Boundary Shapefiles - Zip files for each state are free for the downloading!
• Estately True Area Search - Enter your zip code then map from 1/2 to 10 miles from that zip code in your search.
• PropertyMaps.com has added parcel boundary mapping

3 New Texas Real Estate Mashups:

• POATRI Property Tract Map system - Covers thousands of acres of survey maps in West Texas. Mashup built using the WexZone Mapper
• InspiredAustin.com & DallasTexasRealEstate.com

________________

[Read more →]

::: via :::

Google Map’s Street View turns one today and in celebration Google have released street view for an amazing 37 new cities. The new cities include:

* MA: Springfield
* NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
* NJ: Newark
* VA: Virginia Beach
* NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
* SC: Columbia, Greenville
* GA: Atlanta
* FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
* AL: Huntsville
* MS: Jackson
* TN: Knoxville
* KY: Lexington, Louisville
* OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
* MI: Ann Arbor
* MO: St. Louis
* KS: Topeka
* NE: Lincoln
* OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
* NV: Reno
* CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton

Here is an example of street view - I think this view might be in Reno:

Google have also updated imagery in many of the cities previously covered. This means that many of the images in the sites that are compiling street view galleries will have changed.

Check Out These Street View Galleries

• Streetviewr
• Street View Fun
• Street View Gallery
• Street Viewer Gallery

Via: Google LatLong: Street View turns 1, keeps on growing

___________________

[Read more →]

::: via :::

Posted by Jiajun Zhu, Software Engineer

To celebrate Street View’s one year birthday, I am very happy to announce we are bringing Street View to 37 (you heard me - 37!) new areas and we have expanded coverage in 15 of our existing areas. All in all, this effectively doubles our coverage. The new cities include:

• MA: Springfield
• NY: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
• NJ: Newark
• VA: Virginia Beach
• NC: Charlotte, Winston-Salem
• SC: Columbia, Greenville
• GA: Atlanta
• FL: Boca Raton, Cape Coral, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach
• AL: Huntsville
• MS: Jackson
• TN: Knoxville
• KY: Lexington, Louisville
• OH: Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo
• MI: Ann Arbor
• MO: St. Louis
• KS: Topeka
• NE: Lincoln
• OK: Oklahoma City, Tulsa
• NV: Reno
• CA: Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Stockton

Now you can stroll under the iconic Reno Arch:

Along with showing you some great metropolitan areas, I’m especially excited that we’re also bringing you 10 new parks and recreational areas:

• Everglades National Park (Florida)
• Florida Keys
• Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming)
• Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming/Montana)
• Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)
• Joshua Tree National Park (California)
• Death Valley National Park (California)
• Lassen Volcanic National Park (California)
• Sequoia National Park (California)
• Lake Tahoe (California/Nevada)

Now you can see the boiling springs in Yellowstone National Park from a very safe distance:

And last but not least, Street View coverage has expanded in 15 of our current areas: Boise, Boston, Kansas City, Miami, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Richmond, San Diego, San Francisco, Tampa, and Tucson.

We’ve also been spending the past year working very hard to improve Street View image quality. In this push, we removed some of our oldest images, so say goodbye to odd coloring and funky geometric artifacts. The new images have better color and more consistent lighting.

Let’s revisit San Francisco City Hall:

And the skyscrapers of Chicago:

Now you can look up in all our images. But what goes up must come down, so with this release you can also look down as well. The roof of our car and the ‘black hole’ really aren’t all that interesting — now when you pan down the car is magically gone and you can see straight to the ground in most of our images!

And finally, in the spirit of getting better with age, the face blurring technology we began testing in Manhattan has been deployed for all of our imagery. Remember that all these new Street View images are simultaneously available in Google Earth and through Google Maps API.

[Read more →]

::: via :::
Embed a panoramic Google Maps Street View! - Hot on the heels of a 6 city Google Maps Street View update comes the launch of “embeddable panoramas”. Now you can embed a panoramic image from street view in the same way you can embed a Google Map! Here’s a sample view from just [...]

[Read more →]